River Brown

So I began the holiday break by reading Natalie Goldberg’s Wild Mind. I opened to the first page and fell in love! She spoke to me with her opening sentences and her bluntness. I love when writer’s get real, just put it on paper and stop worrying what others will think!

I thought that maybe it was a sign to go ahead and write my fictional autobiography – there’s stories in there! And with a little embellishing, it just might work…
That or perhaps time to start my series of Spanish books so that they can be used as mentor texts in Writers’ Workshop!

Well, I am nearly done with the book and can’t wait to try out some of her tips such as this one about writing what you can about your dreams: the dream from last night was not pleasant, I know because when I woke up I felt paranoid. It was one of those dreams that somehow affects your real life. I am sure you have experienced it. I can’t recall the exact details but the plot of the dream was that I had done or said something I wasn’t supposed to and my friends as well as work colleagues knew about it. In the dream, I was dashing about madly trying to cover up whatever it was I had done.

I went to a store and tried buying something, but while at the store I ran into a friend and I could not let on to what I had done, so I had to leave the object behind. Then at work, I could not go near the coffee machine as it was related to whatever I had done and once again I could not let others know of my guilt, so I went without coffee. Right in the middle of this dream when I was surrounded by friends and co-workers who were getting centimeters close to my disclosing this secret, I woke up and you know what my initial thought was? “How am I going to fix this?” I was so traumatized from this dream that I thought it was real and had already started planning how I would solve it…jeeeeeeeez.

It took just about a minute for my head to realize it was JUST a dream. And what a sigh of relief! I happily ate breakfast after that. I know that awful dream was trying to tell me something, I think I am guilty, I have done something that wasn’t right… Or I am worried about something. But what have I done and what am I worried about? I am on holiday and I have a great book that I am reading! My biggest worry is whether or not I should finish eating the carrot cake in the ice box. That’s as worried as I need to be.

I will try Natalie’s other tip tomorrow: contrasts. I remember contrasted with I don’t remember or I know contrasted with I don’t know. Yup I believe that might be the one.